Shock is good

Scrawlins'

I am fresh from the back doctor—who had recommended that I go straight to a studio and do some yoga. I’ve arrived, a not-so-fresh concise patient, barely able to walk into said yoga studio in Park City, Utah.

The Park City studio was full of yoga mamas so fit and tight and Three-Way Rich (Three-Way Rich, is a term I coined that means, they come from money, they married money, and if they get divorced, they’ll settle for more money; by the way, I don’t begrudge them a cent), they probably don’t expel gas, even when liberally splayed in the yoga downward dog position.

I’m 44 and it’s the first time I’ve been to a yoga studio; the first time I’ve been eye-to-eye with a women who is Three-Way Rich, good-looking (especially compared to where I come from). Three-Way Rich women. I like it.

I’m lying on the floor of the yoga studio, in such pain I can’t hear, and my vision is foggy. Well, I don’t actually feel any pain, because I’m in shock. But I don’t realize I’m in shock, ‘cause, shock is sneaky; it hides itself at the same time it’s hiding the rest of your pain and emotions. That’s shock’s deal, and it’s a good deal—we can all thank God for it.

But the odd thing about the shock I’m in at the yoga studio is, it’s coming from what seemed to be a minor back tweak (it occurred from pulling my ski tips up out of some moderately heavy Utah powder). Should I be in shock because of that? You go into shock after a car accident or from a broken femur or after cutting off your finger, not from tweaking your back—shock from an injury you can’t see or explain?

What a blessing shock is.

Rusty DeWees tours Vermont and Northern New York with his act “The Logger.” His column appears weekly. Reach him at rustyd@pshift.com.